IT is a posting strictly for those who want to get away from it all.

An island which is home only to 200,000 seabirds has just welcomed one man and two women to help look after one of Scotland’s remotest seabird colonies

Handa Island, which lies a few miles off the west coast of Sutherland, is owned by Scourie Estate and managed as a wildlife reserve in partnership with the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

There have been no full-time inhabitants since 1848 but during the summer Handa attracts many tens of thousands of birds including guillemots, kittiwakes and fulmars.

The island is also home to smaller populations of important seabirds such as Arctic skuas and puffins. Mammals including dolphins, whales and seals are often seen from its coast.

The Trust has appointed an international trio to monitor the wildlife. However, rangers Erika Faggiani from Spain and Johnny Rolt from Bristol and assistant ranger Roxana Buhus from Romania will not have to welcome the usual hordes of human visitors this summer because of pandemic restrictions.

They will undertake a range of tasks, including breeding bird surveys and practical conservation work.

In normal years, more than 7,000-plus visitors flock to the remote isle every summer and have been in growing numbers because it is on the booming North Coast 500 road route.

Eight years ago Handa had a £50,000 comfort stop installed to keep up with the tourist boom.

The Handa eco loo is turf-roofed and made of steel. It took a team of five men six days to build on an island so difficult to reach it needed two landing craft, making several attempts, to bring the specially designed materials on shore.

Positioned on a hill overlooking a beach, the foundations are seven feet deep to stop it being blown into the Atlantic by regular gale-force winds, while the only prying eyes are from the seals and otters who live nearby.

Following completion in 2012, intrepid birdwatchers to one of Scotland’s most spectacular wildlife reserves no longer had to cross their legs until they reached the mainland.

And from the loo you can see lots of iconic mountains like Suilven, Foinaven and Ben Mor Coigach, as well as seals and otters on the nearby beach.

On the island’s busiest days it can receive up to 150 visitors, but currently the trio of rangers will have Handa to themselves and will rely on a weekly trip to the shop.

In their first blog, Johnny, Erika and Roxy wrote: “Life on Handa has been, relative to the rest of the world, plodding along fairly normally since we arrived. This year there are just three of us on the island. Erika spent last season on Handa as the Skua fieldworker and for the last three months Johnny was the practical worker. This is Roxy’s first time on the island but she has settled in wonderfully, despite the slightly different set-up this year. We feel truly blessed to be on Handa during these turbulent times.

“Our first 10 days brought wind. Lots of wind. Stiff sou’westerlies gusting up our backsides at 65mph. Reserve manager Rab Potter joined us for our first five days to get us up to speed with the running of the island and to figure out new protocols for working on Handa with a reduced team and potentially no visitors to manage.

“Once we had stocked up on food, fuel, fishing supplies and enough vegetable seeds to rival the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, we bid farewell to Rab and headed back to Handa before it got dark.

“On Saturday we woke to two golden eagles soaring low over the sheep fank by the bothy, seemingly unbothered by barely suppressed squeals of excitement. Through placing chew plates around the island, we are able to monitor the presence and distribution of Handa’s brown rat population, with future plans to install traps to reduce their detrimental impact on the island’s ground nesting birds.

“We are extremely grateful to be able to continue work on this special island and have never appreciated the benefits of extreme isolation more than we do now.”

In the 19th century, Handa was recorded as having a population of around 65 people. The islanders had a parliament, similar to that of St Kilda, which met daily, and a female-centric society where the oldest widow on the island was considered its “Queen."